Shifting Course

Climate Adaptation for Water Management Institutions

A key challenge for successful climate change adaptation is the development of institutions that can respond more effectively to an uncertain climate future. Because water is the main medium through which we are likely to experience climate change, institutions that play a role in water resources management have a particular need to become more adaptive in their operations and interactions. WWF-US has just published Shifting Course: Adaptation for Water Management Institutions, a report that identifies a set of principles for climate-adaptive institutions. The report includes five case studies from around the world that highlight different institutional responses to climate change and related challenges.

Author Info

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan manages the climate change adaptation policy and governance program at WWF-US, which supports the mainstreaming of adaptation into government policies and resource management institutions. His major area of focus is the Asia-Pacific region. He also manages WWF's "Coastal Resilience to Climate Change" project, which is developing climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation strategies for mangrove ecosystems. Previously, Jonathan worked for nearly five years with WWF's Macroeconomics for Sustainable Development Program Office (MPO). He also spent one year with WWF's Greater Mekong program, based in Laos, overseeing their work on agriculture and land use planning. He holds a master's degree in environmental science from Yale University and a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from Harvard University.

Sarah Freeman

Sarah is a Water Resources Specialist with the Conservation Science Program at WWF-US where she focuses on climate change adaptation and spatial planning. Prior to joining WWF she worked as a water resources engineer on a variety of multilateral and private sector funded infrastructure projects, ranging from airport development to hydroelectric dams. Past research includes hydroclimatic indicator mapping in Africa and international water policy issues. She received her MSc in Water Resources Engineering and her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University.

Margot Hill

Margot is a PhD Candidate at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in the Research Group on Climate Change and Climate Change Impacts. She is researching the adaptive capacity of water governance regimes in two contrasting mountain watersheds (Aconcagua, Chile & Rhone, Switzerland). Past cases of extreme events are being utilized as proxies for climate change as a means to assess and explore governance and institutional indicators of adaptive capacity. Previous to her PhD, she completed her BA Hons in Classics at Cambridge University, then worked in the commercial sector for 3 years, on secondment in Frankfurt, Germany, with Xchanging, before studying for an MSc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London. She has since continued to work alongside her academic commitments volunteering and working in the private sector, for a clean tech incubator, LIFE Incubator in London, Asset4 in Zug, Switzerland, and UNEP Finance Initiative in Geneva.

Eliot Levine

Eliot currently works for the WWF-US climate change adaptation program in Washington DC, where he focuses on capacity building, managing the development of technical and communications tools, and co-leads an area of work on climate-adaptive institutions. Prior to joining WWF, Eliot worked with the United Nations analyzing transaction costs of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. He holds a master's degree of public administration in environmental science and policy from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from Pennsylvania State University.

Case Study Library

Glauco Kimura de Freitas is a Biologist and has a Masters degree in Ecology from the University of São Paulo. He is a freshwater specialist at WWF-Brazil since 2008. He is currently responsible for developing and implementing adaptation strategies to climate change in different Brazilian basins. With more than 15 years working for biodiversity conservation, he has accumulated experience in protected areas conservation and management, exotic species management, freshwater ecosystem protection and environmental project management.

Prior to joining WWF, Glauco worked 8 years for The Nature Conservancy. He holds a title of specialist in management and planning of protected areas by the Colorado State University in 2002 and specialist on watershed management by the UNESCO IHE in 2007, Netherlands.

Maria Placht is an advisor and in-house expert on conflict resolution at the Conflict Resolution and Public Participation Center of Expertise, Institute for Water Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She focuses on the development of this new center and provides technical support to USACE field districts in the areas of conflict resolution and public participation. Maria joined the Army Corps as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2008. As part of her two-year fellowship she completed details at the State Department's Office of Air and Water and the U.S. Institute of Environmental Conflict Resolution.

Prior to joining the Corps, Maria focused on resolving international water conflicts at UNESCO's International Hydrologic Program, part of a fellowship with Harvard University's Program on Negotiation. She has also worked at the Environmental Law Institute, facilitating EPA stakeholder forums on wetlands mitigation and focusing on public participation techniques in transboundary river basins, and at The Nature Conservancy, Yunnan, China office, where she translated Chinese scientific articles and prepared material for a nascent ecotourism program.

Maria currently serves as a mediator on the Department of Defense Roster of Neutrals and on the Planning Committee for the American Water Resources Association DC Chapter. She received her Master's degree in 2008 from The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Water Resource Policy. Her master's thesis focused on the role of collaborative models in resolving water conflicts. She lives and works in Alexandria, VA.

Jamie Pittock is Director of International Programs for the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance. His current work includes developing research programs that link Australian and southern African expertise to improve management of river basins, green water and agriculture. He is also Program Leader for the Australia and United States' Climate, Energy and Water project of the US Studies Centre and ANU Water Initiative. Jamie's PhD examined integration between management of freshwater ecosystems and responses to climate change, including how institutions managed these challenges at the international, national and river basin scales. This research focused on the interplay between the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

Prior to joining ANU, Jamie worked for WWF international as director of their global freshwater program on conservation of wetlands, water use in agriculture, and river basin management. Previously Jamie worked for WWF Australia; he has also worked on environment and natural resource management issues in the Northern Territory and in Victoria.

Ryan is a Water Policy Associate for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University in Durham, NC. Before joining the Nicholas Institute, he received his BA in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Nevada, Reno and went on to get his Master's of Environmental Management from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. There, he focused on Environmental Economics and Policy and a received a certificate in International Development from the Sanford School of Public Policy.

Past and current work includes evaluating water management trade-offs in Lao PDR; climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation at the basin scale; and evaluating institutional adaptive capacity in Nepal.

Stefano joined the IUCN Global Water Program in April 2008 where he works as project officer on issues relating to environmental flows and climate change adaptation. He completed his MSc in Environmental Management and Policy at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University in Sweden. Previously, Stefano worked as an environmental auditor for the provincial authority of Bologna in Italy. He has experience in implementing environmental management systems and conducting research on ecosystem-society interactions.

Stefano also holds a Master's in Natural Science from the University of Bologna for which he carried out a field study on the conservation biology of wetland birds.

Adaptive Institutions

WWF-US, along with the project's Steering Committee, is now planning an exciting second phase of this work that will develop a tool for operational guidance to help water management institutions to promote more climate-adaptive approaches in their operations.

This tool will be piloted with institutional partners around the world, including water management-related organizations at different scales, both in the public and private sectors.

Steering Committee

The project's Steering Committee is drawn from a number of WWF offices and other leading institutions interested in collaborating around issues of institutional adaptation. They are actively helping to shape the next phase of our work.

Members

John Matthews, Conservation International

Jamie Pittock, Australian National University, Canberra

Mark Smith, International Union for Conservation of Nature

Heather McGray, World Resources Institute

Nathan Engle, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland